Today in Linus Pauling: March 19

Wrote these Manuscripts:Vitamin C and the Common Cold: An Up-To-Date Discussion, March 19, 1975.

Chemotherapy, March 19, 1987.

Gave these Speeches:Melting Points, Boiling Points, Crystal Energy, Fifth Lecture, Seminar on the Properties of Monatomic Atoms and Ions, University of California, Berkeley, March 19, 1929.

Perturbation Theory — Method of Variation of Constants, Second Lecture, Berkeley Lectures, Second Series — Introduction to Quantum Mechanics of Aperiodic Processes, University of California, Berkeley, March 19, 1930.

Structure and Specificity, Eli Lilly and Company, No Location, March 19, 1946.

The Third Party Movement in the United States, The English Speaking Union, Oxford University, England, March 19, 1948.

Disarm or Die!, Toronto Committee for Disarmament, Toronto, Canada, March 19, 1961; Causes of Aging and Death, University of Toronto, March 20, 1961.

Science and the Future of Humanity, American Friends Service Committee, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 19, 1963.

The Health and Welfare of Children: Future Directions, Sixth Annual Conference of the Quebec Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, Montreal, Canada, March 19, 1981.

“I say that hundred of thousands of people have had or will have their lives cut short by perhaps ten years, twenty years because of the bomb tests that have already been made.”
– Linus Pauling. “Linus Pauling Address,” Jimmy Jones Recording Studios. June 4, 1957.

During the 1950s, Linus and Ava Helen Pauling were extremely active in educating the public on the dangers of radioactive fallout caused by nuclear weapons tests, delivering hundreds of speeches all around the world. As Cold War anxieties increased and the United States and Soviet Union increased military production, the Paulings condemned the production of atomic weapons and encouraged their audiences to join them in speaking out against the arms race.

Having gathered the signatures of over 2,000 scientists, Linus Pauling released the petition on June 3, sending copies to the United Nations and U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower. Ignoring a series of attacks on his character and loyalties, Pauling expanded his mailing program, acquiring signed petition forms from scientists in dozens of additional countries. By early 1958, the Paulings had received more than 9,000 signatures, making international headlines in the process. Those in support of the petition included some of the most prominent scientific personalities of the era: Salvador Luria, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Harold Urey and Max Delbrück to name just a few of the Nobel laureates who joined the effort.

(One of the lesser-known Nobel Prize winners to sign, William P. Murphy (Medicine, 1934), is of particular interest in that, circa 1905, he and Pauling lived in the same small eastern Oregon farming community of Condon, a town of perhaps 1,000 residents that would produce three Nobel Prizes.)

Partly as a result of the momentum generated by Pauling’s petitioning, in August 1963 the Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibiting above-ground nuclear explosions was signed by Soviet Premiere Nikita Khruschev and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Dr. Pauling was awarded the 1962Nobel Peace Prize for his role in prompting this accord.